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The electroencephalogram (EEG) has a limited but definitive role in understanding and managing psychiatric conditions. When the presentation is unusual, a neurological workup that includes an EEG is essential.

The poorly conceived DSM-5 Somatic Symptom Disorder substitutes a false psychiatric certainty that misleadingly covers medical uncertainty about the appropriate diagnosis. It is better to admit what we don't know than cover it with meaningless labels.

Parents of children with ADHD frequently ask whether there are nonmedication treatments that are effective for managing their children’s symptoms of ADHD. A recent meta-analysis provides an answer to this clinically important question.

Has the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity had any real impact on your ability to provide care to patients, or are you experiencing the shells and mortars of paperwork and denials? And will the average patient ever really benefit from the laws, or were they just passed to make the country feel better about the state of psychiatric care in the US?

Over half of the population is exposed to at least one lifetime traumatic event, yet relatively few of those exposed have lasting psychiatric sequelae. As psychiatrists, we attend to the needs of those who suffer.

Psychiatrists need to understand how living in violent families and neighborhoods increases the likelihood of trauma and the psychiatric sequelae associated with it as well as how to respond in the aftermath.

When attempting to incorporate resilience-building strategies into practice, it is worthwhile to note that resilience is a dynamic concept in which successful coping may mean a mixture of major real-life successes in the context of continuing difficulties.

Engaging in mindfulness activities either individually or with patients who come to us for brief medication visits can have a profound influence on the therapeutic process.

Across our nation, mental health care funding and resources are either slashed to the bone or nonexistent. Yet, at the same time, there is a unique opportunity available right now for any and all who want to tackle reform.

We climbed concrete ramps from the subway’s underground world, up to the grandstand and my first vision of heaven...

Jane Orient, MD, comments: Many physicians are outraged, not only by the cost -- an expense which must be incurred to maintain certification, but also by the fear that MOC is being advanced as a requirement for hospital privileges, and perhaps even maintenance of licensure. More here. . .

As most mental health professionals know by now, psychiatry's D-Day is rapidly approaching. DSM-5 addresses diagnostic categories, but there has never been an official treatment manual to complement the diagnostic one.

The art of living is the ability to use life’s inevitable traumas in some constructive fashion. This occurs on an odyssey that the resilient take that could be termed “the Journey of the Traumatized Hero.”

Sometimes viewed as “legal cocaine,” the over-the-counter status of synthetic cathinones (aka bath salts) gives the illusion that they are safe. In fact, they are highly toxic.

While it is true that the intense grief of bereavement and major depressive disorder often share some features-for example, tearfulness, insomnia, low mood, and decreased appetite-there are many substantive differences.

A new clinical society has been founded to coordinate TMS practices and to connects physician and non-physician members from across the world.

If you are a psychiatrist who tends to look on the bright side, you may find the results of a new physician survey to be relatively good. Psychiatrists report the lowest level of professional burnout and the lowest level of burnout severity across various specialties. But just how good is relatively good?

In a new study, researchers found an absolute risk of 4.42% of valproate use during pregnancy with autism spectrum disorder and an absolute risk of 2.50% for childhood autism.

Traumatic brain injury, criminal responsibility, traumatic stress, and autism spectrum/neurodevelopmental disorders slideshow

The intense level of international interest in DSM-5 is a great surprise. Although DSM has become a research standard around the world, it is rarely used by clinicians outside the US and therefore poses a much lesser threat to their patients. So why all the prominent media coverage in countries outside of the US?

With ECT‚ the response rate for treatment-refractory patients is sobering‚ and the treatment is not without risks and adverse effects.

The ethical aim of psychiatry is the relief of suffering and incapacity.

The Sandy Hook Promise . . “To do everything in our power to be remembered--not as the town filled with grief and victims; but as the place where real change began.”